The present invention relates to a multiple type air conditioner system which comprises a plurality of indoor units and a plurality of outdoor units and a method for setting addresses thereof.
In a conventional separator type air conditioner system, each of outdoor and indoor units connected each other by a refrigerant pipe is provided with a controller having a microcomputer and a communication line is connected between the outdoor and indoor units, so that the system is controllably operated while the controllers transmit and receive mutual control information through the communication line. For example, in such a single type air conditioner system comprising a single outdoor unit 1 and a single indoor unit 2 as shown in FIG. 7, connection between the indoor and outdoor units is effected by means of a communication line 3; whereas, in such a multiple type air conditioner system comprising a single outdoor unit 1 and a plurality of indoor units 3 as shown in FIG. 8, connection between indoor and outdoor units is effected by means of a communication line 3.
When it is desired to install a plurality of air conditioners in an identical building, a plurality of outdoor units are installed in many cases on the roof of the building. In such a case, in order to make a total length of communication line as short as possible, there has in these years been employed a system in which interconnection between a plurality of outdoor units 1 and a plurality of indoor units 2 is carried out on a continuous cross wiring basis by means of a communication line 3 as shown in FIG. 9. This connection system is usually known as bus type connection.
In this bus type connection system, even when the outdoor and indoor units have different piping systems, physical communication can be established. In order to control an air conditioner system, it has been necessary for the actual combinations between the outdoor and indoor units in their identical piping system for transferring control information between the outdoor and indoor units in their idential piping system.
Therefore, in order to limit the combinations between the outdoor and indoor units, a number setter is used for setting a group address for each of microcomputer-based controllers of the respective units, the address being able to be read by the associated controller microprocessor. This group address enables transmission and reception of control information between the outdoor and indoor units in the same combination.
A prior art example of such an address setting method for an air conditioner system is described in a catalogue entitled "New Saison Air-Conditioner Transmission System" issued from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. in February, 1990.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned address setting method using the number setter, which address setting is manually carried out, has had disadvantages which follow.
(1) At the time of installing the air conditioner system, an installation worker must set an address on every unit basis while confirming the state of the connection between the outdoor and indoor units, which requires a lot of time.
(2) There is a possibility that a mistake by the installation worker causes an erroneous setting.
Further, a method for performing desired reliable operation of an indoor unit in accordance with a correlation between the indoor unit and a solenoid valve is described in JP-A-5-141819.